The management of the Valley County EMS District has changed.
Up until now, the district was run by the Valley County Commissioners. In November, voters passed a ballot measure that allowed Valley County Commissioners to create a three-person EMS Commission, with each new commissioner running a subdistrict in the county.
Doctor Gregory Irvine of McCall, Ron Julian of Cascade, and Travis Smith of Donnelly were sworn into these positions on Monday afternoon. This change allows for the new commissioners to meet monthly rather than yearly.
“Everybody liked the idea of having an EMS specific commissioners that had the bandwidth and the time to oversee EMS properly,” McCall Fire Chief Garrett de Jong said. “It has always just been something that the county commissioners dealt with annually for 15 minutes and it needed more oversight and planning and all that kind of stuff.”
This part of the measure passed by 71%. Another part of the measure asked voters to increase the levy rate of the district to $40 per $100,000 of taxable value, which failed. Instead, Valley County property owners will continue to assume the current rate of $12 per $100,000 of taxable value.
De Jong said it will be up to the new commissioners whether or not to put the measure back in front of voters, adding that he anticipates the commission doing this in May.
